Title: The Linguistics of History
Publication Year: 2004
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/
Book URL: http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/cgi/odbic.exe?input=NewWeb/Books/Harris2642.htm
Author: Roy Harris, Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at the
University of Oxford
Hardback: ISBN: 0748619305, Pages: 256, Price: U.K. � 45.00
Abstract:
The task of the historian would be impossible without verbal resources
for dating and describing past events. Historians from Herodotus
onwards traditionally relied uncritically on their own native
languages (including Greek, Latin and English) to provide all they
needed. In so doing, they also took over a traditional Western view of
the relationship between language, the world and the passage of
time. This determined for them the rational limits of historical
knowledge. Their 'histories' could not go beyond these limits without
straying into the realms of myth or imagination. Their philosophy of
history was circumscribed by their (often unstated) philosophy of
language.
This book is the first comprehensive attempt to trace the relationship
between Western philosophy of history and Western philosophy of
language. It spans the whole development of education from the ancient
Greeks down to the present day. It examines the impact on history of
modern movements, including structuralist and postmodern approaches,
as well as the recent advent of television history.
Features
* The first comprehensive attempt to relate Western philosophy of
history to Western philosophy of language
* The author is a leading authority on linguistics and the philosophy
of language
* The book is written in an accessible style for all levels of reader
Customers in North America please contact our distributors: Columbia
University Press in the US and University of British Columbia Press in
Canada.
Lingfield(s): History of Linguistics
Philosophy of Language
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)
See this book announcement on our website:
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=10536.